The History of Saint Augustine, Florida

by William W. Dewhurst

With this force Monteano entered upon the invasion of Georgia; but, being opposed by Oglethorpe with great energy and skill, was entirely unsuccessful, and the expedition retired to St. Augustine. From thence the forces returned to Cuba, where the governor was imprisoned and tried for misconduct, though acquitted of the charges.

In the next year Oglethorpe endeavored to retaliate upon the Spaniards, and get possession of St. Augustine by a sudden attack which should take the town by surprise. He is said to have approached with such celerity and secresy that he arrived within sight of the town without exciting an alarm. Here he captured a small body of troops acting as a guard to the king’s workmen. This capture defeated the success of his surprise, for, the absence of the guard being noticed, a body of horsemen were sent out to learn the cause of their detention, and the forces of Oglethorpe were discovered in time to close the city gates and prepare the garrison. Oglethorpe was unwilling to risk an assault on the town, and retired into Georgia, after spending two months in attempting to provoke the Spaniards to a fight without the walls of the town. During this time his troops completely devastated the surrounding country.

Up to about this period there had existed an Indian village near the site of Fort Mosa (or Moosa) called Macarizi. It was probably located on a creek now called “Baya’s Creek,” about two miles north of the city, though the Franciscan Father Ayeta, in his “La Verdad Defendida,” p. 215, says that Macarizi and Nombre de Dios (Topiqui) were the same.

Soon after Oglethorpe retired Governor Monteano furnished arms and ammunition to one Pedro Christano, a Spanish Indian chief among the Yemassees, and incited incursions against the British colonists in Georgia. These were continued under the encouragement of the Spaniards until the settlements south of St. Simonds Island were entirely broken up. These hostilities, which had continued since 1725, were mutually suspended under the treaty which was concluded between England and Spain in 1748, but marauding expeditions were again entered upon in 1755. The Spanish ambassador at London, having obtained from the court of St. James an order commanding the English settlers to retire from the territory of Florida, the new governor, Don Alonzo Fernandez de Herreda, sent a company of dragoons to hasten the obedience of the English colonists. Upon a summons the English agreed to retire, but they never did so, and the next year, 1763, the provinces of the Floridas were ceded to Great Britain in exchange for Havana and the western portion of Cuba, which had been captured from the Spanish. This treaty was concluded on the 3d of November, 1762, and ratified February 10th, 1763.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TOWN WHEN DELIVERED TO THE ENGLISH.—FORT SAN JUAN DE PINOS.—ST. AUGUSTINE AS DESCRIBED BY THE ENGLISH WRITERS 1765 TO 1775.

Before the cession of the province, the fort had been completed, and presented, at the time it was delivered to the English, very much the same appearance as now. Many of the casemates had platforms about seven feet from the floor for sleeping apartments. The moat was about four feet deeper than at present, and the water battery was built in such a manner that the guns were mounted upon it instead of behind it, as at present. The high banks of sand on the north, west, and south sides of the fort have been placed there in recent times as a protection from the shot of modern guns, which would soon make a breach through almost any thickness of coquina wall. The fortress occupies about four acres of ground, and mounts one hundred guns, requiring a garrison of a thousand soldiers, though a much larger number have, on several occasions, been its garrison. Its site was well chosen for the protection of the town in the days when it was built, as its guns command the whole harbor and inlet from the sea, as also the whole peninsula to the south, upon which the town is built, the land approach from the north, and the marshes west of the town. Various dates have been assigned as the period at which the work on this fort was commenced, but of this date there is no record in this country, if there is in Spain. At the time of Drake’s attack, 1586, there was an octagonal fort on or about the site of the present structure, which was built of logs and earth. In 1638, or thereabouts, the Apalachians were set to work on the fortifications of the town, and, as Menendez had applied himself to strengthening the defenses of the town after the attack of De Gourges, 1567, it is probable that this fort had been commenced before the beginning of the seventeenth century. That the Spaniards had then begun to use coquina as a building stone is to be inferred from a statement of Romans, that, in his time, one of the old houses of the town bore the date 1571. The name of the wooden fort was San Juan de Pinos, and the present fort bore the name St. John for many years. It is supposed that the old wooden structure stood near the north-west bastion, which was probably called St. John, while the south-east was named for St. Peter, the south-west was called St. Augustine, and the north-east St. Paul.

It is uncertain when the name St. Mark’s was first applied to the castle, though probably during the English occupation, 1663-1684. The fort, doubtless, acquired the name from that applied to the present north river, which was called by the Spaniards St. Mark’s River, at the mouth of which the fort is located. It is probably the oldest fortification now standing in the United States, and certainly the oldest which is yet in a good state of preservation. From the date at which the Apalachians began work, until the year in which the fortification was declared finished and the commemorative tablet erected, the period during which it was being built is one hundred and eighteen years. It has now been a century and a quarter since this magnificent old structure, representing the grandest military architecture of the middle ages, was completed, and two centuries and a half since its inception.

What a strange and eventful history is connected with its stone walls, its deep ditch, its frowning battlements, its dismal dungeon, and damp casemates, in the midst of which, on the north side, is its chapel with raised altar, built into the masonry, and holy water niches in the walls of the casemates.

Those who have read this history thus far will have noted the laying of its foundations by the hands of those zealous and bigoted Catholics who had exterminated a settlement of the subjects of a friendly nation, lest they should spread among the barbarous Indians heretical doctrines; the accretion of its rising walls under the hands of the unfortunate Indians, who had been loath to accept the Christian teachers and doctrine that had been forced upon them by these expungers of heresy, until, with the aid of convicts and king’s workmen, the work was completed, to stand the defense of the Spanish possessions in Florida, the protection of fugitive slaves, depredating Indians, Spanish pensioners and adventurers, and the prison of many wretched Indians and whites who had fallen under the displeasure of a Spanish autocrat. For almost two hundred years the Spanish ensign had been uninterruptedly displayed from the site of this fort, when, by the treaty of 1762, it was yielded to the British, and the cross of St. George displayed from its battlements.